The vampire stretched his arms out and sat down on the edge of a tombstone. “It was a small group, five Reds. Very red now, hah.” He pulled a face, seeing that his audience wasn’t too receptive.

“Scouts?” Sally asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

Theo tilted his head from side to side. “Hmm. No. Our enemies are often foolish and overconfident, but they wouldn’t send a small group like that, knowing what we were capable of.”

She shrugged. “How do they really know what we’re capable of?”

With a humorless grin, the vampire tilted his head toward Chuck. “Forgot something in the Spire dungeon, didn’t you?”

The druid exchanged glances with Dent. “We left the Observer in containment there.”

Theo nodded. “The leader of the Reds isn’t Seven anymore. You might want to call them… Eight.”

Sally gasped. “They’re just an amalgamation of a bunch of Observers? I was kinda hoping it would be someone more familiar.” She rubbed at her hair. “I suppose this was the only way they could be a credible threat, though. A normal Player like Chuck would be too easy to eat.” From behind her, the druid pulled a face.

Humphrey rolled out his shoulders. “Hmm. That many Observers in one form is concerning. I would assume that they were powerful enough to resist the Architect's call.”

“Certainly,” Theo added. “It didn’t make sense to me at the time, but now I understand what the Last Word were trying to tell me. Or trying not to tell me. It was difficult when they died so quickly.” His head turned towards the good Lana. “No offense.” She pulled a face in response.

“Get to the point, fangs.” Sally waved a hand at him. “We have a fight in a couple of minutes. We don’t have time for vague exposition to be drip fed to us so you can feel smug about yourself.”

He opened his mouth, but deflated upon seeing her expression. “They weren’t scouting, but setting something up. I disabled whatever it was, but it may still had some effect. I couldn’t tell what it was meant to be, however. Either a beacon or area ability. Also, at some point, Seven absorbed the power to make Corrupted STARs.”

She groaned. “So there will be more random bullshit abilities to deal with.” Turning to the Death Knight, she pouted. “You’d think the Architect would care more about that than us.”

Scratching at the side of his head and causing a grating squeal, Humphrey hummed to himself in thought. “This Event might not just be for us.”

Theo yawned and stood back up, his suit clean once again. “Architect saw there were four problems and decided to mash them together and deal with the fallout. Outsiders, Seven, Uniques, and Humphrey.”

Sally nodded. “Humps is a problem, I agree. Three of those things are on our side already, in a way. Shame we couldn’t convince Seven to join us and take down the bigger threat.”

Rubbing at his head, Chuck sighed. “Seven is aiming for more of a ‘hard reset’ of the System, if not the destruction entirely. So we need to stop both.”

There was a rumbling through the floor, signaling the next Invasion was about to begin.

“Better be something edible,” Sally murmured to herself. She turned her attention over to the ruined gates of the graveyard, where shapes started to emerge from darkness. If Seven had the left-behind Observer then they could be a lot closer than they first thought. She watched the Monsters come into the light.

Large salamander-looking lizards, with spines and long fins down their backs. Wide feet with long claws, and devious grins full of sharp teeth beneath eyes of bright yellow. Green and red scales, either mottled or striped with black. Around… two dozen of them, maybe more.

“Something moves from the woods,” Fern called out. “Singular. Slow. Destructive.”

Sally shot a glare at the vampire. “You didn’t leave anyone behind?”

He shook his head. “I can go check?”

She sighed, looking between the woods and the lizards about to work in toward them. Humphrey was already empowering himself, ready to run in. Splitting their forces at this stage might be a bad idea. Better to focus down the Monsters as quickly as possible before the unknown got to them, so they could face it together.

“No.” She shook her head. “Maintain and destroy.”

Theo nodded without further argument, switching to his punch-blades and summoning his [Sanguine Weapon] to trail behind him. Although he seemed happy enough to follow her orders, it didn’t do anything to lessen her worry about what might actually be on the way.

Sally ground her teeth together. Already, she imagined the worst possible scenario. The Reds had summoned something large to soften them up while they dealt with the Invasion - and after struggling through that, Seven would arrive either before they could recover, or with the next wave of Monsters.

She could be wrong, of course. Maybe it was Seven himself already coming to meet them. It could be anything - but right now she had some lizards to chew.

"Keep us updated," she shouted back to Fern, as she ran toward the Invasion creatures.

Humphrey was already upon them, a flare of light appearing where he struck the first lizard. A sphere of light red encircled his target, a magical shield absorbing his attack.

Sally groaned as she pointed her staff forward. What kind of shield was it? Threshold, damage, hit, or chance based? Ahead of her, the vampire was in the fray too - more spheres of shielding popped up around a handful as he darted through.

[Meat Hook] shot her towards one as she brought up [Ruin] again, thankful that the longer cooldown still allowed her to cast it every Invasion. Also Monsters were generally not clever enough to avoid standing in the red stuff. Her dagger-end of the staff bounced off the red shield off her target, with the rest of her body following suit.

A bandage darted in to assist her in landing back on her feet, now in the middle of the Monsters. Her shield came up to protect against a lashed out tail, and she slid backward across the slick mud. [Mortis Bomb] went out in retaliation, but was absorbed by the magical shield and brought up no dead.

Claws came in from the side, which she hopped away from, almost landing in the wide jaws of the next lizard. With a flourish, her staff brought up the flares of shields again. A couple of them were weaker in brightness than others, but still preventing her from dealing any damage.

“Number of hits, refreshes on cooldown,” Theo shouted from the side as he mashed the skull of a Monster in, his trio of blows a blur with [Novice Strike].

Ah, if that was the case, then she knew the solution. The vampire might have the best attack speed by far, and so was best at dealing with the creatures one-by-one. She didn’t have that kind of patience.

[Endless Dead]

Fifty zombies began to crawl up around her, protected for two seconds as part of [Death Aura] so that they could get their footing before being mushed. Almost immediately, the area became awash with red light, as all the undead leveled an attack at the nearest lizard.

Sally hopped forward between a couple of her pals and brought down the skull-end of her staff at the closest opponent. The shield was dull now, so she spun around and attacked with the dagger end. Much to the surprise of the lizard that was trying to push away the sudden throng of zombies, a shield did not protect it, and the defense-penetrating blade lodged straight into their skull.

[Eat Brains]

She popped her heal up around her to keep her pals afloat, even if some had already been shredded by the large creatures. [Strength in Numbers] quickly pushed the tide in the favor, even if it was gradually decreasing as her zombies were beaten up. The improved [Desecrate Life] went out, pulsing around her to weaken the foes, allowing some of the undead to hang on and regain health from [Hunger for Flesh].

That felt pretty good. It was nice that the System eventually found a place for her to fit and gave her skills that made sense rather than the random assortment she had started with at the beginning. She still needed a ranged magical attack that she could cast repeatedly for when she was tired of punching things in the head, but a gal had to eat.

Theo had become a torrent of energy, zipping between six different lizards and wearing the shields down with multiple blows every time he switched position. Occasionally, he’d hit one that was open to attack and shredded them with his blades, letting the zombies to overpower them. Allowing her pals to get the curse over to the new corpses so they’d rise to her side. He was always thoughtful like that.

Humphrey was having less fun, being the slowest of the group. His skeletons were out and assisting with getting the shields down, but even with the help of Lucius he was getting through the Monsters at a snail’s pace - mostly on the defense. Then, with the distance whirring noise, the lizards near him were pelted with a spray of crossbow bolts, their shield flaring brightly before dissipating. One of the skeletons was collateral, with a few of the projectiles also bouncing off the Death Knight.

“Sorry, tin can!” Jackie yelled from the back as her attacks abated.

He slammed his greatsword forward into the nearest lizard’s head, before twisting it, splitting their head apart. A grunt was his only acknowledgement as he stepped toward his next target.

It was a shame Theo wasn’t in the Party. She sidestepped a swipe of long claws, pain shooting up her side as she was caught by the tips. A zombie took the brunt of the attack and fell to the ground. With a step forward, she fired a [Mortis Bomb] nearly point blank and then stabbed her staff through the front foot of the distracted lizard. The rising zombies joined the others in taking down the Monster.

Sally looked around. It seemed as though this Invasion was just about spent. Without Theo or her horde, they would have had a much harder time of it all. The lizards were strong, but their difficultly was due to their protective shields. Without them, they were just hardy beaters - and so far nobody could win a punch-out against the Outsiders.

She plucked her staff back up and started to walk back up through the graveyard. The area surrounding the gates was becoming a detriment to fight in. Already slick from the rainfall, it was now soaked through with blood and corpses. They might have to move further up the area just to avoid slipping over onto the blades of the next Monster wave. Or whatever they had instead of swords.

Other than the inedible Invasions, they had been pretty lucky with the Monster choices the System had thrown their way. Possibly random. But then again, when had a System-created really given them much trouble? Ignoring the fact that she almost died to that dungeon Boss in the Wastes, of course. They seemed to be getting powerful exponentially compared with how Players had more linear growth. It was almost unfair.

She tilted her head to the side to watch Chuck heal up Lana. The woman was being supported by Dent, as it looked like she had taken claws or a bite to her legs. With the brief glow of radiance, she was then mostly fine and able to walk. It reminded her of the Forest and what they had sought to do back there.

Theo walked up beside her, his eyes over at the group of humans. “I can hear your thoughts, Sally Danger. You want to send them away.”

“Yeah.” She looked up at him and pouted. “Not a fair thing for me to ask, and they’d probably refuse.”

“I understand it. But what greater strength than being willing to put their life on the line to fight to the end?”

Sally rolled her eyes. “Rich coming from you, pup. I get it though.”

“Attention!” Fern called from the place they had settled into. “Contact is imminent!”